Beethoven and Jane Austen's Birthdays
Next: December 16, 2026
A symphony and a good novel.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks a shared birthday. Jane Austen was born at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire on 16 December 1775, the seventh of eight children of a country clergyman, and grew up to write Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised in Bonn on 17 December 1770. His birth date was not recorded, but he was probably born the day before, in the house that is now the Beethoven-Haus museum. His hearing worsened from the mid-1790s until he was totally deaf, yet he went on to compose his greatest works.
How it's celebrated
Beethoven's birthplace in Bonn draws more than 100,000 visitors a year. Austen's birthplace no longer stands, but Jane Austen's House in Chawton, her home from 1809 to 1817, where she revised her novels for publication, has been open to the public since 1949. For the rest of us, it is a fine evening for a chapter of Austen and a Beethoven symphony.
Did you know
- Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, appeared in 1811 without her name: the title page said only 'By a Lady'.
- The 'Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824, became the anthem of a united Europe.
- The Ninth was first performed in full in Asia on 1 June 1918, by German prisoners at the Bandō camp in today's Naruto, Japan, where it has since become a year-end tradition.
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